Vietnam's mobile phone sales declined 15 percent in the first quarter due to economic difficulties and weakened purchasing power after the Lunar New Year holidays, according to an international survey.

Feature phone sale declined 14 percent, as a number of local and Chinese vendors exited the market, the International Data Corporation - a global information technology market research and analysis company said in its recently revealed Asia Pacific Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker.

"We expect more to leave the market in 2012 as they struggle to recoup investments under current conditions," Vo Le Tam Thanh, senior market analyst for Client Devices Research at IDC Vietnam, said in the statement.

The smartphone market, meanwhile, saw a decrease of 21 percent, as only a few Android phone vendors continued to perform well, according to the survey.

In fact, the Android platform has taken up 79 percent of the Vietnamese smartphone market, Thanh said.

He attributed Android's popularity to a number of affordable products from various vendors and the marketing efforts of Samsung and HTC.

On the other hand, Windows Phone shipments are not that widespread due to uncompetitive prices and a lack of local apps, the expert said.

According to IDC, Nokia, Samsung and LG were the three top mobile phone vendors in Vietnam in the first quarter.